Apple Polishes New Products
by Don Rittner

Apple Computer and Steve Jobs were a big hit in Tokyo this past week as Apple released new versions of it's best selling iBook and Powerbook computers. Jobs also released some impressive figures. Apple was ranked #4 in the Japanese market last quarter with 50% of Japanese iMac buyers being first-time buyers and 15% were switching from Windows based machines. This means that 2 out of 3 iMac buyers are new customers, and that is important for the long term survival of any computer company, especially for Apple, which for years the media continually wrote its obituary.

The iBook which has sold more than 250,000 units was the #1 selling portable last quarter. The familiar blueberry and orange portable now are shipping with double the memory and double the disk size with the price staying exactly the same ($1599). Jobs also announced a new iBook Special Edition, similar to the hot iMac SE DV special edition. The graphite-and-white portable is very impressive looking. The new iBook Special Edition has the same basic specifications as the revised iBooks - 64MB memory/6GB hard drive - but has boosted to a 366-Mhz PowerPC processor instead of 300 Mhz.

iBook's feature a 12.1-inch TFT display for super-crisp images and video; a PowerPC G3 processor; built-in 56K modem and 10/100BASE-T Ethernet networking; and a built-in USB port and CD-ROM drive. iBook is the first "wireless ready" portable computer, with two built-in antennas and an internal slot for Apple's AirPort wireless networking card (optional). With AirPort wireless networking up to 10 computers can share one Internet connection at speeds up to 11 megabits per second and distances up to 150 feet (half a football field) - all without wires. iBook's design innovations include a rubber- coated translucent enclosure for durability, a pullout handle for safe carrying, and a unique "latch- less" closing mechanism for faster and easier access, according to Apple.

Fastest portable in the world

Apple's PowerBook G3 series has been touted as "the fastest portable in the world," but they wanted to go even faster so they released updated versions of the G3 Powerbook. Two models have 400MHz and 500MHz speedsters with 64 or 128 MB RAM, a 6 or 12 GB hard drive and 6 speed DVD-ROM drive. The design has not changed.

The new laptops have two FireWire ports, 100-MHz bus speed, ATI RAGE Mobility 128 graphics, 1MB backside cache, a 5 hour battery life and AirMac (AirPort) antenna built into the lid for wireless connectivity.

New G4's

The G4 lineup announced consisted of three models released with 400 to 500 MHz speed and various RAM and hard drive configurations.

Mac OS X and Fonts

Mac OS X, Apple's new and improved operating system with rich new features was demonstrated last month at the San Francisco MacWorld, but Apple was pushing the global capabilities at Tokyo and to the Japanese market. Mac OS X (Ten) combines Quartz (based on the Internet-standard portable document format), QuickTime and OpenGL for the sharpest graphics ever seen on a personal computer.

Worried about old Macs not making the transition to the newer system, Apple has assured users that they are making it easy by supporting three critical applications environments in the Mac OS X system: Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa.

Classic lets you run all your existing Macintosh applications "as-is." Your old apps will run like they do on Mac OS 9, but won't take advantage of Mac OS X's state-of-the-art "plumbing and the Aqua interface components."

According to Apple, "Carbon applications are optimized to run on Mac OS X. They'll get the use of the modern carbon applications programming interface, all the great features of the Darwin core OS (like protected memory for crash-resistant computing and pre-emptive multitasking for a more responsive system)."

Finally, they have included Cocoa, an advanced object-oriented programming environment so that developers will have a new toolbox for building next generation applications.

More than 100 developers have pledged support of the new operating system.

It has been a very good past year for Apple. According to recent market research, their blueberry iBook was the best selling portable computer in the US. A monthly hardware sales report by PC Data revealed that combined sales of Apple's iBook and PowerBook G3 product lines gave the Company an 11 percent share of the US portable computer market.

Apple Maintains the top education spot in US as well. Several leading education market research firms confirmed that Apple holds the number one position in computer sales to the US education market with a market share of 22.2 percent giving the Company a lead of 3.1 percent over its nearest rival, according to Apple.

Apple's last quarter posted a net profit of US $111 million. For the 1999 fiscal year, the Company generated revenues of US $6.1 billion and net earnings of US $601 million. It was four profitable quarters in a row.

Not bad for a company that was proclaimed dead the year before.